Tolerating Elopement Increases It — What Student Would Stay in Class If They Could Leave?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why allowing students to leave classrooms without consequences makes elopement worse, not better.
Key Takeaways
- Tolerating elopement increases it - When students learn they can leave class without consequences, more students will choose to leave
- This isn't a new disability - The rise in elopement is driven by policy changes, not a sudden increase in student needs
- Clear expectations reduce elopement - Students who know they must stay in class and will face consequences for leaving are far more likely to stay
Transcript
Let's talk more about students who elope from the classroom, runners.
And this is a great question.
Is this getting more common?
It seems like this is kind of a rare thing historically in education.
And I think the answer is yes, it is getting more common, but not necessarily because of any change in students, but because we're allowing it.
And this is why any new kind of wacky idea that people think, is better a better solution to a problem that has not really been that big a problem like if the solution seems to make the problem worse we have to really look at that and say are we are we actually causing this what i'm hearing is happening now in a lot of schools with runners is that nobody stops them from running nobody blocks the door and says you know go sit down nobody escorts the student back to class nobody is willing to like touch the student in any way or there's policies that say you're not allowed to do that and as a result we end up with this like parade of of adults following the student around the building, trying to intervene in some way without touching them and without making them stop running away.
So you have somebody following them around saying, do you want a snack?
Do you need a preferred reward?
Do you want a timeout?
Do you want to, like we're offering the student all these things and the student just wants attention and wants to avoid being in the classroom.
So they run around and they rip things up and they throw furniture and they do all this stuff.
that is not safe, that is not better for them, because we're not willing to stop them.
Yes, we're increasing this.
Yes, we're encouraging this.
Think about it for a second.
If you give a kid the choice of sitting in the classroom and doing their work, or of being the grand marshal of a parade of adults that they get to lead around the building until they get tired of it, What's that kid going to pick?
That kid is going to choose the parade every single time.
And the way to stop reinforcing that is to stop tolerating it.
This kind of thing is happening more because we are allowing it to happen.
It is as simple as that.
It is not complicated at all.
And the kid knows it, right?
The kid knows if I run out of the classroom, I'm going to get lots of attention.
I'm going to get to avoid my work.
And I'm just going to have a little parade here.
But if we put a stop to it, we say, no, go sit down.
I'm standing in front of this door and I'm not letting you out of it.
Or I'm taking you back to class and I don't care what you think about it.
That works.
And that stops the behavior in the great majority of the cases.
Let me know what you think.